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WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 24: U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) participates in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about. the War Powers Act on May, 25, 2011 in Washington, DC. The committee was hearing testimony on the War Powers Act and the U.S. involvement with operations in Libya. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

After the science (and anti-science)-associated debacles of this past election, you might, as a science consumer, hope that our elected officials would adhere more closely to scientific evidence as they represent and make decisions on behalf of our nation's taxpayers. When it comes to autism, however, science and evidence often find themselves left out, even in congressional hearings intended to address them. Will that be happening again on November 29? According to The Hill,

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is planning a hearing later this month on rising autism rates and the federal government's response.

The panel, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), has invited witnesses from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as Autism Speaks and other advocacy groups.

The brief goes on to say that

Autism rates are rising quickly. One in 88 children has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by age 8, the CDC reported in March, a dramatic increase from its previous estimates.

What this brief posting doesn't say is who has been promoting the meeting and why (those other 'advocacy groups'), and whom this meeting will leave out. As an editor at The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, I became aware of this meeting before it officially made the calendar of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and our editorial team had immediate concerns. The initial conduit for this information was a website that primarily promotes the idea that mercury or vaccines or both cause autism and that children with autism are vaccine injured. As a commenter notes on The Hill brief, "This hearing was planned by those who believe autism is caused by environmental agents and nothing is being done about it." I can't objectively confirm the assertion that a Congressional committee meeting was somehow planned by an outside group with that belief, but I can confirm that two groups with agendas focused on the mercury-vaccine-autism causation chain have taken a very high profile in promoting this meeting and urging their followers to attend.

One way these groups try to spur their followers into action is by highlighting that 1 in 88 number, the most recent that the CDC has reported as autism prevalence among 8-year-olds in the US. The Hill brief calls this a "dramatic increase" from previous estimates, but the previous estimate from 2009 was 1 in 110, for an increase from 0.9% to 1.1%. As I have detailed elsewhere, an abundance of evidence suggests that much of this uptick is the result of corrected misdiagnoses, recalibrated diagnostic criteria, and greater awareness and that 1% is emerging as a fairly steady value in populations worldwide. That does not, however, keep organizations from inaccurately using the word "epidemic" to describe autism in the United States.

According to The Hill, invitations to the Committee meeting say that the intention is to discuss how the feds are responding to the recent rise in autism diagnoses and allocating government resources for autism, in addition to reviewing treatment options for autistic people. What the roster of purported invitees does not seem to include is autistic people themselves or their advocacy organizations. Because the editorial team of The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, including me, has concerns that a diversionary agenda involving the debunked mercury-vaccine-autism association might dominate the proceedings, we have publicized the meeting ourselves in the hope that people with a broad range of perspectives and experience can attend. [Disclosure: I played a role in confirming that the meeting was taking place and in devising a conduit for those who cannot attend the meeting to fax their comments to the Committee, including approving the sample fax letter available at that link.]

As the parent of an autistic child and as a scientist, I'm concerned that a meeting with an agenda not grounded in science will harm not only autistic people who have no voice in the proceedings but also general public health by again raising the specter of "vaccines cause autism" in the public consciousness. Given the stark evidence of how vaccines save lives, any hearing with a Congressional imprimatur should especially involve careful, science-based consideration of public health issues.

I also believe that support in the form of appropriate educational, employment, and therapeutic access for autistic people is important. The federal government devotes considerable resources to autism in the United States, including authorizing $1 billion for autism biomedical and treatment research in 2011. We also already have a federal committee to synthesize and publicize autism-related information and engage in strategic planning for addressing autism-related supports. Would more support be a boon to autistic people and their families, especially if it targeted existing needs? Yes. But I do not understand how a Congressional committee meeting not focused on those needs would suddenly generate any useful insights or practical effects in a hastily organized proceeding with invitees who don't represent the entire spectrum of the autism community. Soon-to-retire Rep. Dan Burton, the man responsible for the 'circus-like' vaccines-autism committee proceeding in 2000 that featured one Andrew J. Wakefield, remains on this Congressional committee. Given that in 2007, when the purported vaccines-autism link was already disintegrating, Burton argued that families of autistic children should be compensated for "vaccine injury" through the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, I don't have terribly high hopes that science will be in attendance at this latest meeting, either.